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Barbarian Troubles

Updated Oct. 15, 2001 1:36 a.m. ET

To put it bluntly, the Middle Kingdom has never been very sensitive to the feelings of foreigners. For millennia the Chinese simply referred to them as barbarians, and the ones who refused to make obeisance were simply kept at arms length. Despite several decades of Maoist rhetoric about solidarity with other Third World nations, that didn't change much until very recently. And if you arrived in China last week from the Middle East, you might be forgiven for thinking nothing had changed at all. That's because the authorities have issued advisories to domestic airlines cautioning them about allowing people of Middle Eastern...